Some players are shy like me which is one reason I will not play a Bard, if other players got over the fact that just due to Bards knowing how to play 3 instruments and can use those as a spellcasting focus doesn't mean they want to be up on stage performing. They are a great class in the support role with the spell selection and other class abilities, but everytime someone plays a Bard everyone trys to get them to sing and perform. I say let them play the way they want if they are having a good time they are playing right, if your not having fun leave the group or suck it up they may get more comfortable with RP in time but trying to force it is just wrong.
My take on this is that role-playing isn't about accents, or performing. Role playing is about making choices from the perspective of your Character.
I know a lot of people expect that Bards need to be played like Sam Riegel does, but so long as a Player can communicate what their Bard Character is doing and how, that's good enough for me: I try an play a soothing song on my lute to calm the crowd down, I try to subtly flatter the Reeve to get him in a good mood, I remind the Baron that we saved his infant son from kidnapping and that he owes us. Is it a bit dry? Maybe. But I'd rather have a shy but comfortable Player experimenting with what it might be like to be suave and debonair Character in that manner, than a miserable shy Player trying to be flashy and perform because they feel that they have to do so.
Maybe they'd relax into something a play style which is a little more expressive, over time. But maybe not, and that's OK.
Disclaimer: This signature is a badge of membership in the Forum Loudmouth Club. We are all friends. We are not attacking each other. We are engaging in spirited, friendly debate with one another. We may get snarky, but these are not attacks. Thank you for not reporting us.
When I brought in the idea of being a bard and my DM told me I’d have to sing, I backed right up and became an angsty warlock instead. I did text bards that could sing through typed emotes but at the table? Flip that.
he mere thought of singing and dancing as a bard in front of my fellow D&D players makes me want to gag. I could play a bard, but not do the roleplaying that certain aspects of playing it practically require.
When I brought in the idea of being a bard and my DM told me I’d have to sing
That's not roleplaying; it's buffoonery.
D&D is not a LARP. It is a table-top game. Do the players of fighters stand up and swing their plastic swords around and smack paper-mache dummies with them? Do ranger players have to bring one of those toy bow-and-arrow sets with the bull's eye on them and have to hit the target rather than roll 1d20 to hit? Do the wizard players open up a notebook full of paper "aged" with old tea bags and hand-written in their own calligraphy in actual Celtic runes and read them off when casting a spell? Do the cleric players bring actual holy symbols and holy water to game play and hurl the holy water at the DM when "turning undead?"
I'm betting in each of these other cases... no.
So why would a bard player be expected to stand up in front of the table and sing and dance? That is utterly ridiculous.
You should not have to sing. You should not have to make up poems. You cannot possibly be expected to play 3 different musical instruments either. All you have to do is narrate... "My character stands up on stage, and sings the Ballad of the Orc Invasion to the crowd while playing his harpsichord (or whatever instrument)." That is perfectly fine, and it is roleplaying. Anyone who says it's not RP should go back and learn what RP actually is.
In a roleplaying game, you are playing a character who has many different skills and abilities you do not personally have. No one should expect you to have those abilities. I don't have a 17 strength either, and I can't break down doors in real life, but my Paladin might, and he can break down doors on a simple strength check. When doing that, the DM doesn't make me get up and smash the front door in either. So why would anyone expect a bard's player to stand up and sing?
If you want to do that as a player, OK, I guess, but as I say... I consider this to be buffoonery, not roleplaying. An RPG is a game, not a traveling stage show.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
WOTC lies. We know that WOTC lies. WOTC knows that we know that WOTC lies. We know that WOTC knows that we know that WOTC lies. And still they lie.
Because of the above (a paraphrase from Orwell) I no longer post to the forums -- PM me if you need help or anything.
When I brought in the idea of being a bard and my DM told me I’d have to sing, I backed right up and became an angsty warlock instead. I did text bards that could sing through typed emotes but at the table? Flip that.
I think that's the Sam Riegal affect. Players don't have to do what he did with Scanlan. Players shouldn't be forced to sing, dance, sword-swallow or play any instruments if they want to play a bard.
When I brought in the idea of being a bard and my DM told me I’d have to sing, I backed right up and became an angsty warlock instead. I did text bards that could sing through typed emotes but at the table? Flip that.
I think that's the Sam Riegal affect. Players don't have to do what he did with Scanlan. Players shouldn't be forced to sing, dance, sword-swallow or play any instruments if they want to play a bard.
Sword-swallow... why is this starting to sound like one of those disclaimers for side effects on pharmaceutical commercials? "Cures your headaches amazingly. Possible side effects are nausea, gastrointestinal discomfort, diarrhea, eczema, hernia, renal failure, and death."
When I brought in the idea of being a bard and my DM told me I’d have to sing, I backed right up and became an angsty warlock instead. I did text bards that could sing through typed emotes but at the table? Flip that.
I think that's the Sam Riegal affect. Players don't have to do what he did with Scanlan. Players shouldn't be forced to sing, dance, sword-swallow or play any instruments if they want to play a bard.
Sword-swallow... why is this starting to sound like one of those disclaimers for side effects on pharmaceutical commercials? "Cures your headaches amazingly. Possible side effects are nausea, gastrointestinal discomfort, diarrhea, eczema, hernia, renal failure, and death."
Disclaimer: This signature is a badge of membership in the Forum Loudmouth Club. We are all friends. We are not attacking each other. We are engaging in spirited, friendly debate with one another. We may get snarky, but these are not attacks. Thank you for not reporting us.
Yea, RP can be fun, but too much can get boring fast
D&D is at it's a heart, a tactical combat game.
If your primary interest is RP, you may be better off joining a theater group.
Now that’s highly debatable, D&D can be many different things to many different people. For TotM players, we almost never use a grid or minis at all even.
While it is different things to different people, the part that's actually fully supported by the rules is the tactical combat. Which applies even if you're using TotM, it's just less focused on positioning then. The non-combat rules put the burden almost entirely on the DM for determining difficulty and outcomes.
That said, if your primary interest is RP, I'd suggest different roleplaying games rather than a theater/improv group. There are a lot of other games out there that have mechanical support for social "combat" in addition to rules on actual combat.
Well, if you’re on that “Amazing Headache Cure” that might be wishful thinking. And you know what they say: “You can wish in one hand and leak into the other and see which one fills up first.”
I think that's the Sam Riegal affect. Players don't have to do what he did with Scanlan. Players shouldn't be forced to sing, dance, sword-swallow or play any instruments if they want to play a bard.
Again. Sam was performing on a TV show. Critical Role is, literally, a stage show. It's a very good stage show, but it's still a stage show. The players are professional performers, and as part of their RP experience, they do performances. And it's fine if they want to do that -- after all, it's a show.
But a normal D&D game is not a stage show. It is a game. Played by players, not actors or performers. A bard's player should not be under any more requirements to physically act out the abilities of his or her class, than any other player at the table/in the discord. To require the bard's player to do more than everyone else is unfair.
And again, singing or reciting poetry have exactly nothing -- nothing! -- to do with roleplay.
Roleplay is having your character act in the way he/she would, rather than the way you would. That's it. That's all RP is. If you're doing that, you're RPing. If you wouldn't normally sing but you say your bard is singing -- you're roleplaying. If you wouldn't normally stab someone but your assassin stabs a person in the back -- you're roleplaying. That's it... that's all there is to roleplaying: having your character act in the way he or she would, rather than the way you would. Thinking as someone else, instead of as yourself.
All the other fluff -- what I call the buffoonery -- that's performance. It's a bunch of fancy-shmancy hand-waving done for show and effect. Highly entertaining, yes. Fun to watch, sure. But it's got nothing to do with roleplay.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
WOTC lies. We know that WOTC lies. WOTC knows that we know that WOTC lies. We know that WOTC knows that we know that WOTC lies. And still they lie.
Because of the above (a paraphrase from Orwell) I no longer post to the forums -- PM me if you need help or anything.
Yea, RP can be fun, but too much can get boring fast
D&D is at it's a heart, a tactical combat game.
If your primary interest is RP, you may be better off joining a theater group.
Now that’s highly debatable, D&D can be many different things to many different people. For TotM players, we almost never use a grid or minis at all even.
While it is different things to different people, the part that's actually fully supported by the rules is the tactical combat. Which applies even if you're using TotM, it's just less focused on positioning then. The non-combat rules put the burden almost entirely on the DM for determining difficulty and outcomes.
That said, if your primary interest is RP, I'd suggest different roleplaying games rather than a theater/improv group. There are a lot of other games out there that have mechanical support for social "combat" in addition to rules on actual combat.
While all of that is true, and while it is true that D&D was originally based on a tactical combat game in the first place, that’s not all it is.
Saying something to the effect of “If you want to RP then don’t play D&D.D&D is all about combat, so if you want to RP go be an actor.” is as erroneous a statement as saying “If you like looking at nature don’t go for a hike in the woods. Hiking is all about exercise, if you want to observe nature go be a bird watcher.”
The best part about D&D is that it can be whatever we make it, and it can be wildly different from group to group to suit everyone’s or anyone’s idea of fun.
If practiced accents and singing Bards is fun for one group, and another group is having a blast on the murderhobo express, and a third group is having fun speaking in the third person and exploring their characters’ story arcs, and a fourth group loves solving the DM’s puzzles, that’s still all D&D. But none of those groups should ever feel compelled to do it the same way as any of those other groups, and none of them have the right to tell the others that they don’t D&D “the right way.”
Yea, RP can be fun, but too much can get boring fast
D&D is at it's a heart, a tactical combat game.
If your primary interest is RP, you may be better off joining a theater group.
Now that’s highly debatable, D&D can be many different things to many different people. For TotM players, we almost never use a grid or minis at all even.
While it is different things to different people, the part that's actually fully supported by the rules is the tactical combat. Which applies even if you're using TotM, it's just less focused on positioning then. The non-combat rules put the burden almost entirely on the DM for determining difficulty and outcomes.
That said, if your primary interest is RP, I'd suggest different roleplaying games rather than a theater/improv group. There are a lot of other games out there that have mechanical support for social "combat" in addition to rules on actual combat.
You have a good point in that the non-combat aspects of D&D are woefully under supported. That's partly because writing systems for combat is the easy part. I have systems for everything else in place, but those are built by me, for me and my tables, over time and experience, based on other editions, other RPGs, and the writings of other DMs.
However your "suggestion" really smacks of a particular kind of gamist purism ( don't contaminate my dungeon crawler combat simulation with your filthy RP ). That's probably not what you actually meant. I could absolutely turn that around and say that since D&D has other aspect built ( somewhat weakly ) into it, then if your primary interest in tactical combat, I'd suggest a different wargame. There are lots of tabletop tactical wargames that have much better mechanical support for detailed combat ( Advanced Squad Leader should be a years deep rabbit hole for even the most crunchy of wargamers ).
However - I am not saying that to you.
I think the strength of D&D is that it meets somewhere in the middle, and that any given table can play with the dials and sliders to get the results you want.
That seems to be a fact that many many many people on this forum ( among many others ) seem to miss: D&D isn't a game. It's a framework by which any group can derive the particular game they want to create. Is it infinitely flexible? Is it equally good at everything? Does a DM have an equal workload expanding all aspects of the game? Of course not. But it's a middle ground, even if it's not the most neutral middle ground possible.
Your table is - very very likely - quite different from mine. That's OK. I don't think either of us wrong; we just have different styles.
To suggest that if I'm not going to play the game your way, or in a manner that embraces what you believe to the core of the game, that I should go play somewhere else, is fairly elitist.
Disclaimer: This signature is a badge of membership in the Forum Loudmouth Club. We are all friends. We are not attacking each other. We are engaging in spirited, friendly debate with one another. We may get snarky, but these are not attacks. Thank you for not reporting us.
You have a good point in that the non-combat aspects of D&D are woefully under supported. That's partly because writing systems for combat is the easy part. I have systems for everything else in place, but those are built by me, for me and my tables, over time and experience, based on other editions, other RPGs, and the writings of other DMs.
Care to share some of these systems, perhaps in another thread? I have my own for some things but I'd love to see what you've come up with.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
WOTC lies. We know that WOTC lies. WOTC knows that we know that WOTC lies. We know that WOTC knows that we know that WOTC lies. And still they lie.
Because of the above (a paraphrase from Orwell) I no longer post to the forums -- PM me if you need help or anything.
While it is different things to different people, the part that's actually fully supported by the rules is the tactical combat. Which applies even if you're using TotM, it's just less focused on positioning then. The non-combat rules put the burden almost entirely on the DM for determining difficulty and outcomes.
That said, if your primary interest is RP, I'd suggest different roleplaying games rather than a theater/improv group. There are a lot of other games out there that have mechanical support for social "combat" in addition to rules on actual combat.
To be fair, the thread is about trying to encourage other players in a D&D campaign to RP and not whether the game is designed for it. Suggestions to go do something else do not address the present topic at all.
The suggestion I favor most is to lead by example but also to not put too much expectation on other players to join in the RP.
The thread has noted that RP comes in different styles, too, and points out that it can affect players' willingness to participate.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Human. Male. Possibly. Don't be a divider. My characters' backgrounds are written like instruction manuals rather than stories. My opinion and preferences don't mean you're wrong. I am 99.7603% convinced that the digital dice are messing with me. I roll high when nobody's looking and low when anyone else can see.🎲 “It's a bit early to be thinking about an epitaph. No?” will be my epitaph.
The DM is allowed to have fun too, Bio. Why everybody thinks the DM needs to make themselves absolutely miserable to please a batch of players who refuse to meet said DM even a step of the path towards halfway is beyond me. DMing is too much gorram work to do if you aren't enjoying the games you're running as much as the players are.
+2 for using gorram.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
"Sooner or later, your Players are going to smash your railroad into a sandbox."
-Vedexent
"real life is a super high CR."
-OboeLauren
"............anybody got any potatoes? We could drop a potato in each hole an' see which ones get viciously mauled by horrible monsters?"
-Ilyara Thundertale
To post a comment, please login or register a new account.
Bueller... Bueller...
Could you imagine that droning voice doing nothing but monologues as a Bard.
Creating Epic Boons on DDB
DDB Buyers' Guide
Hardcovers, DDB & You
Content Troubleshooting
My take on this is that role-playing isn't about accents, or performing. Role playing is about making choices from the perspective of your Character.
I know a lot of people expect that Bards need to be played like Sam Riegel does, but so long as a Player can communicate what their Bard Character is doing and how, that's good enough for me: I try an play a soothing song on my lute to calm the crowd down, I try to subtly flatter the Reeve to get him in a good mood, I remind the Baron that we saved his infant son from kidnapping and that he owes us. Is it a bit dry? Maybe. But I'd rather have a shy but comfortable Player experimenting with what it might be like to be suave and debonair Character in that manner, than a miserable shy Player trying to be flashy and perform because they feel that they have to do so.
Maybe they'd relax into something a play style which is a little more expressive, over time. But maybe not, and that's OK.
My DM Philosophy, as summed up by other people: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1rN5w4-azTq3Kbn0Yvk9nfqQhwQ1R5by1/view
Disclaimer: This signature is a badge of membership in the Forum Loudmouth Club. We are all friends. We are not attacking each other. We are engaging in spirited, friendly debate with one another. We may get snarky, but these are not attacks. Thank you for not reporting us.
When I brought in the idea of being a bard and my DM told me I’d have to sing, I backed right up and became an angsty warlock instead. I did text bards that could sing through typed emotes but at the table? Flip that.
That's not roleplaying; it's buffoonery.
D&D is not a LARP. It is a table-top game. Do the players of fighters stand up and swing their plastic swords around and smack paper-mache dummies with them? Do ranger players have to bring one of those toy bow-and-arrow sets with the bull's eye on them and have to hit the target rather than roll 1d20 to hit? Do the wizard players open up a notebook full of paper "aged" with old tea bags and hand-written in their own calligraphy in actual Celtic runes and read them off when casting a spell? Do the cleric players bring actual holy symbols and holy water to game play and hurl the holy water at the DM when "turning undead?"
I'm betting in each of these other cases... no.
So why would a bard player be expected to stand up in front of the table and sing and dance? That is utterly ridiculous.
You should not have to sing. You should not have to make up poems. You cannot possibly be expected to play 3 different musical instruments either. All you have to do is narrate... "My character stands up on stage, and sings the Ballad of the Orc Invasion to the crowd while playing his harpsichord (or whatever instrument)." That is perfectly fine, and it is roleplaying. Anyone who says it's not RP should go back and learn what RP actually is.
In a roleplaying game, you are playing a character who has many different skills and abilities you do not personally have. No one should expect you to have those abilities. I don't have a 17 strength either, and I can't break down doors in real life, but my Paladin might, and he can break down doors on a simple strength check. When doing that, the DM doesn't make me get up and smash the front door in either. So why would anyone expect a bard's player to stand up and sing?
If you want to do that as a player, OK, I guess, but as I say... I consider this to be buffoonery, not roleplaying. An RPG is a game, not a traveling stage show.
WOTC lies. We know that WOTC lies. WOTC knows that we know that WOTC lies. We know that WOTC knows that we know that WOTC lies. And still they lie.
Because of the above (a paraphrase from Orwell) I no longer post to the forums -- PM me if you need help or anything.
I think that's the Sam Riegal affect. Players don't have to do what he did with Scanlan. Players shouldn't be forced to sing, dance, sword-swallow or play any instruments if they want to play a bard.
Sword-swallow... why is this starting to sound like one of those disclaimers for side effects on pharmaceutical commercials? "Cures your headaches amazingly. Possible side effects are nausea, gastrointestinal discomfort, diarrhea, eczema, hernia, renal failure, and death."
You forgot anal leakage.
Creating Epic Boons on DDB
DDB Buyers' Guide
Hardcovers, DDB & You
Content Troubleshooting
I think we'd all prefer to forget anal leakage.
My DM Philosophy, as summed up by other people: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1rN5w4-azTq3Kbn0Yvk9nfqQhwQ1R5by1/view
Disclaimer: This signature is a badge of membership in the Forum Loudmouth Club. We are all friends. We are not attacking each other. We are engaging in spirited, friendly debate with one another. We may get snarky, but these are not attacks. Thank you for not reporting us.
While it is different things to different people, the part that's actually fully supported by the rules is the tactical combat. Which applies even if you're using TotM, it's just less focused on positioning then. The non-combat rules put the burden almost entirely on the DM for determining difficulty and outcomes.
That said, if your primary interest is RP, I'd suggest different roleplaying games rather than a theater/improv group. There are a lot of other games out there that have mechanical support for social "combat" in addition to rules on actual combat.
Well, if you’re on that “Amazing Headache Cure” that might be wishful thinking. And you know what they say: “You can wish in one hand and leak into the other and see which one fills up first.”
Creating Epic Boons on DDB
DDB Buyers' Guide
Hardcovers, DDB & You
Content Troubleshooting
Again. Sam was performing on a TV show. Critical Role is, literally, a stage show. It's a very good stage show, but it's still a stage show. The players are professional performers, and as part of their RP experience, they do performances. And it's fine if they want to do that -- after all, it's a show.
But a normal D&D game is not a stage show. It is a game. Played by players, not actors or performers. A bard's player should not be under any more requirements to physically act out the abilities of his or her class, than any other player at the table/in the discord. To require the bard's player to do more than everyone else is unfair.
And again, singing or reciting poetry have exactly nothing -- nothing! -- to do with roleplay.
Roleplay is having your character act in the way he/she would, rather than the way you would. That's it. That's all RP is. If you're doing that, you're RPing. If you wouldn't normally sing but you say your bard is singing -- you're roleplaying. If you wouldn't normally stab someone but your assassin stabs a person in the back -- you're roleplaying. That's it... that's all there is to roleplaying: having your character act in the way he or she would, rather than the way you would. Thinking as someone else, instead of as yourself.
All the other fluff -- what I call the buffoonery -- that's performance. It's a bunch of fancy-shmancy hand-waving done for show and effect. Highly entertaining, yes. Fun to watch, sure. But it's got nothing to do with roleplay.
WOTC lies. We know that WOTC lies. WOTC knows that we know that WOTC lies. We know that WOTC knows that we know that WOTC lies. And still they lie.
Because of the above (a paraphrase from Orwell) I no longer post to the forums -- PM me if you need help or anything.
While all of that is true, and while it is true that D&D was originally based on a tactical combat game in the first place, that’s not all it is.
Saying something to the effect of “If you want to RP then don’t play D&D.D&D is all about combat, so if you want to RP go be an actor.” is as erroneous a statement as saying “If you like looking at nature don’t go for a hike in the woods. Hiking is all about exercise, if you want to observe nature go be a bird watcher.”
The best part about D&D is that it can be whatever we make it, and it can be wildly different from group to group to suit everyone’s or anyone’s idea of fun.
If practiced accents and singing Bards is fun for one group, and another group is having a blast on the murderhobo express, and a third group is having fun speaking in the third person and exploring their characters’ story arcs, and a fourth group loves solving the DM’s puzzles, that’s still all D&D. But none of those groups should ever feel compelled to do it the same way as any of those other groups, and none of them have the right to tell the others that they don’t D&D “the right way.”
Creating Epic Boons on DDB
DDB Buyers' Guide
Hardcovers, DDB & You
Content Troubleshooting
You have a good point in that the non-combat aspects of D&D are woefully under supported. That's partly because writing systems for combat is the easy part. I have systems for everything else in place, but those are built by me, for me and my tables, over time and experience, based on other editions, other RPGs, and the writings of other DMs.
However your "suggestion" really smacks of a particular kind of gamist purism ( don't contaminate my dungeon crawler combat simulation with your filthy RP ). That's probably not what you actually meant. I could absolutely turn that around and say that since D&D has other aspect built ( somewhat weakly ) into it, then if your primary interest in tactical combat, I'd suggest a different wargame. There are lots of tabletop tactical wargames that have much better mechanical support for detailed combat ( Advanced Squad Leader should be a years deep rabbit hole for even the most crunchy of wargamers ).
However - I am not saying that to you.
I think the strength of D&D is that it meets somewhere in the middle, and that any given table can play with the dials and sliders to get the results you want.
That seems to be a fact that many many many people on this forum ( among many others ) seem to miss: D&D isn't a game. It's a framework by which any group can derive the particular game they want to create. Is it infinitely flexible? Is it equally good at everything? Does a DM have an equal workload expanding all aspects of the game? Of course not. But it's a middle ground, even if it's not the most neutral middle ground possible.
Your table is - very very likely - quite different from mine. That's OK. I don't think either of us wrong; we just have different styles.
To suggest that if I'm not going to play the game your way, or in a manner that embraces what you believe to the core of the game, that I should go play somewhere else, is fairly elitist.
My DM Philosophy, as summed up by other people: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1rN5w4-azTq3Kbn0Yvk9nfqQhwQ1R5by1/view
Disclaimer: This signature is a badge of membership in the Forum Loudmouth Club. We are all friends. We are not attacking each other. We are engaging in spirited, friendly debate with one another. We may get snarky, but these are not attacks. Thank you for not reporting us.
Care to share some of these systems, perhaps in another thread? I have my own for some things but I'd love to see what you've come up with.
WOTC lies. We know that WOTC lies. WOTC knows that we know that WOTC lies. We know that WOTC knows that we know that WOTC lies. And still they lie.
Because of the above (a paraphrase from Orwell) I no longer post to the forums -- PM me if you need help or anything.
To be fair, the thread is about trying to encourage other players in a D&D campaign to RP and not whether the game is designed for it. Suggestions to go do something else do not address the present topic at all.
The suggestion I favor most is to lead by example but also to not put too much expectation on other players to join in the RP.
The thread has noted that RP comes in different styles, too, and points out that it can affect players' willingness to participate.
Human. Male. Possibly. Don't be a divider.
My characters' backgrounds are written like instruction manuals rather than stories. My opinion and preferences don't mean you're wrong.
I am 99.7603% convinced that the digital dice are messing with me. I roll high when nobody's looking and low when anyone else can see.🎲
“It's a bit early to be thinking about an epitaph. No?” will be my epitaph.
+2 for using gorram.
"Sooner or later, your Players are going to smash your railroad into a sandbox."
-Vedexent
"real life is a super high CR."
-OboeLauren
"............anybody got any potatoes? We could drop a potato in each hole an' see which ones get viciously mauled by horrible monsters?"
-Ilyara Thundertale